If you are here, it is because you are interested in joining our Liberatory Learning Circle--A Collaborative Learning Circle for Analyzing and Envisioning Liberatory Evaluation, Data Use and Beyond.
If you are already a member or know you are in the right place, please skip down to the questions to share your contact information and affirm your interest in joining us.
- One working on healing and transforming how we show up in our work, organizing, healing and learning spaces coordinated by Geri Peak for folks racialized into color categories that face systemic marginalization and oppression. So far our main activities are: 1) monthly informal meetings, 2) Annual support of healing and respite space at the American Evaluation Association meeting, 3) aspirationally offering informal/formal mentoring based on customized agreements between members 4) hosting a healing retreat to build relationship and well-being starting with summer 2024, 5) meet-UPS at meetings, 6) wild and routine collaborations.
- And the other one, on hold for now, for those self-classified as from the imposed dominant culture and/or racialized as white and working as allies, aiming to regroup in 2024.
We are open to patient with and accepting of our identities and ideologies, but because of that openness we tend to be progressive in our ways. By progressive it means looking to advance and transform society in alignment with love, oneness, care, fidelity and understanding. Our intention is to be radical in our envisionings and impeccable in our gentleness, consideration and understanding.
Our formulating purpose is to create healing, generative space to explore liberatory concepts and tie them to how we utilize our creative forces, often focused on data and information, to support the holistic transformation of society. We are, at the same time, intentionally transforming ourselves in ways that help us contribute to the transformation of society individually and collectively.
This form is one small step towards a more organized effort which began as a LEEAD Practicum (
https://expandingthebench.org/leead/). While our intention at first was to remain a small working group our longer term vision is evolving into something more tangible and yet still undescribed which is more hopeful and generative than reactionary, more British encompassing than a typical community of practice, more fluid than a project-based exploration and more expansive than the Expanding the Bench initiative. Yet we aim to be much less capitalistic than creating another edifice to maintain which can trap us into mindsets focused on self-preservation, competition and the fracturing and branding of knowledge over collaboration and the elevation of truth and much more inclusive to encompass diverse flavors of artivists, actionists, activists, activators, actuators, actualizers, advancers, amplifiers, animators, attuners, and awakeners! And that's just the "A's!"
We have centered our practice on relationship building and service, honoring the spirit of our commitment, listening to ancestral and spirit guidance as well as innovative and creative intellectual work. An event held in August 2021 led to the formation of an ally's group that is in a more evolutionary state than the original group organized for those encompassed in color labels that neither serve, nor celebrate our true realities even as we are proud of who we are individually, withing our groups as we define them, and collectively.
We are learning to apply collective study, discourse and reflection, creativity to influence action among ourselves, within our independent practice fields and with our communities of colleagues and clients to examine how our work can be leveraged more intentionally towards contributing to social transformation.
We are still in a formative stage and have yet to determine how we will expand responsibly. We do know that what we experience together is valuable and we are committed to sustain our practice towards a meaningful contribution to a liberatory evolution of ourselves, our practices and our world.
Currently we, of the global majority, meet monthly on the third Tuesday 3pm Eastern Time using the Gather platform as a more naturalistic way to interact online. In 2023,
Gather reduced it's free offering from 25 to 10 persons at one time. Thus far, this has not been a cost issue before a per day cost of $3 per person is required. We have agreed, if any group reaches more than the free maximum, to either each chip in $3 each just for those gathered at a particular session. For 2024 we are aiming to negotiate with Gather, collaborate with an ally organization or make our own financial arrangement to accommodate larger gatherings at any time. We can always jump to another platform if that makes more sense.
Sign up below to signal your interest. We'll be in touch periodically.
Please feel welcome to contact
geri@twogemsconsulting.com for questions, to speed up integration into our email list, to volunteer to lead the ally group and to share comments.
Haven't heard from anyone? Nag Geri at geri@twogemsconsulting.com.
